While I understand that sometimes it is useful to mine an empty block when one has not had time yet to validate all transactions in the previous block. This validation should be very quick compared to the average 10min block time (validating a full block of like 2000 transactions should not take more than a few seconds on a modern PC, no?).
So, why the hell is Antpool mining so many empty blocks???

Just to compare, the same stat for the 2nd largest pool, F2Pool, gives only 4% blocks <100kB and 0% <10kB.

EDIT: I pulled out some more stats over the last 500 transactions as of 16/12/2006 11:25 CET
- 18 blocks < 5kB (3.6%)
- AntPool mined 98 blocks, out of which 16 < 5kB (16.3%) covering almost 90% of empty blocks
- Empty blocks came on average 6.6min after the last block so yes faster than the overall average 10mins but still plenty of time to include transactions
- Only 16% of these 18 were very quick empty blocks <1min

The answer is full of rhetoric, can you please improve your answer by supporting your claims with some sources?
– renlordDec 15 '16 at 20:39

1

There are valid reasons for mining empty blocks. Certainly it is not something miners want to do sequentially or frequently. The phenomenon is not entirely due to the devious reasons you state.
– venzenJun 24 '17 at 3:49